Towards the ultimate triumph of the new poetry the work of William Cowper represents perhaps the most important contribution, judging at least from the viewpoint both of its significance as indicating new tendencies in literature, and of its immediate influence on readers and writers. In the narrow sense of style the “simplicity” which was Cowper’s ideal was only occasionally marred by the conventional phraseology and bombastic diction which he himself laid to the charge of the “classical” school, and his gradual emancipation from the tenets and practices of that school is reflected in his steady advance towards the purity of expression for which he craved. And in this advance it is to be noted that the gradual disappearance of personified abstractions is one of the minor landmarks.
The earlier work furnishes instances of the common type of mere abstraction where there is no attempt to give any real personification. Even in the “Olney Hymns” (1779) such verses as
But unbelief, self-will
Self-righteousness and pride,
How often do they steal
My weapon from my side
only seem to present the old mechanical figures in a new setting.[237] The long series of satiric poems that followed draw freely upon the same “mythology,” and indeed the satires that appear in this 1782 volume recall to some extent the style of Churchill.[238] There is a somewhat similar, though more restricted, use of personified abstraction, and, as in Churchill’s satires, virtues and vices are invested with slight human qualities and utilized to enforce moral and didactic truths. Thus,
Peace follows Virtue as its sure reward
And Pleasure brings as surely in her train
Remorse and Sorrow and Vindictive Pain.